iPhone 5 nano-SIM starts shipping to carriers

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Anyone who is familiar with a SIM card can see that there’s a lot of unnecessary plastic. Reducing the size of the SIM means that you can reduce the size of the thing holding the SIM, which is something every phone manufacturer is actively trying to accomplish right now.

Most OEM’s have adopted the micro-SIM here in the US, but Apple has been pushing ahead to go even smaller with the nano-SIM. It was expected that we would see the nano-SIM in the next iPhone, and that rumor appears to be confirmed as carriers start to receive packs of them as you can see above.

The nano-SIM is much smaller than the other two molds for the technology, barely offering enough plastic required to hold the electronics in place. Since the SIM card isn’t something that gets removed much anymore, there’s a lot of incentive for Apple to want this tech to be as small as possible. T-Mobile Germany appears to be one of the first to have received a pack of the new cards, with instructions to set them aside and wait for further information regarding their use. Since we are only a short time away from Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone 5 launch, it makes sense that carriers around the world would start getting these SIMs in.

The nano-SIM is likely to be one of those technologies that other manufacturers are unlikely to blindly follow Apple in using. There are several companies attempting to use the additional plastic on the existing SIM cards for new technology. One of the most popular ideas currently is to put NFC functionality on the SIM card, which would allow carriers to offer NFC on their terms. Apple has yet to announce any plans for NFC, and the nano-SIM standard makes it clear that they will approach that technology their own way.